I’d long been a fan of everyone’s be-afroed samurai, mainly because the music was divine and you can’t get cooler than Samuel L mothereffing Jackson.

Afro Samurai is an East meets West anime series starring the voice of the one and only Samuel L. A collaboration between Japan and America, it was the first of its kind – personally, I adore the ultra violence (I have a very testosteroney taste in pop culture) and the great hip hop style music, as well as the ridiculous cynicism and anachronism present in each episode. The pull, of course, was the strength of the main character – charismatic despite his few words, the Afro Samurai was funky as fuck and often slid into a rhythm in time with the music in order to slay his foes.

To the point eh? Well they’re releasing a game.
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I was browsing my local SunKus convenience store in Kagoshima, Japan, and I found this next to the cans of coke. It just sat there, casually, daring me to buy it. Final Fantasy Potion. I never thought I would see the day.

Despite the fact that it tastes like crap, it got me thinking – if you can get potion to top up that 200 hp you were missing when you woke hungover, what else in life could be helped by an item from Final Fantasy?

Here are my thoughts:

A Silence Grenade could come in handy for times when you are stuck in a conversation about last night’s X-Factor.

Holy Water for when you have to go to work on no sleep and you feel a bit zombified.

Remedy: cures abnormal status. i.e, cures your own idiocy. I need this one a lot. You’re in trouble when it wears off though.

Random encounters OFF: A lifesaver when you have a hangover and no makeup on.

Viva Piñata is a strange beast. The original was a brightly coloured all-ages sandbox game that came out at the end of 2006. Since then it’s spawned three further games (a DS version, an apparently terrible set of minigames and the direct 360 sequel Trouble in Paradise) and a children’s TV show.

The two XBox 360 Viva Piñata games are both very entertaining games and there are various things about them that are cute. The little snuffly piñata noises the animals make, the fact that all the species have names that are animal/candy puns, the growing plants and building them little houses and making your piñata happy and sending them off to parties. All very cute.
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In your obligatory slice of Tim Schaefer news, there have been excellent, if slightly unexpected developments on his his latest action adventure project – Brütal Legend. It’s about an axe-wielding roadie fighting demons and riding gigantic souped-up death cars and there may be some Norse mythology thrown in there as well. That thorough synopsis combined with the trailer released in October (below) suggest it’s going to be great and very silly.

In the summer Activision, who were meant to be publishing Brütal Legend, went and spoiled it all by merging with Blizzard and abandoning a load of games they had in development. After six months in publishing limbo it was annouced today that EA have picked up the rights. Yes, that’s EA as in Electronic Arts. While it’s obviously great that its got a publisher it’s a little surprising that it’s sequel-churning behemoth EA who are taking it on. Brütal Legend is not a sequel and not a spin-off from a film and it’s likely to sell to a cult market but not necessarily much beyond. It’s entertaining that it will be brought us by the company that has force-fed the market foie-gras style the hundreds of expansions of the Sims, Madden NFL and FIFA. I hope they bring out a Rock Band expansion to celebrate the launch.